Mage 5.4 Trinket Discussion

Hi All,

I've wanted to start a specific trinket discussion for a bit but was torn as to wether it should go into the 5.4 Discussion thread and get lost in 65 pages with 60 of them being crap. Now that thread is locked, I think it's time we talked about these in a bit more detail.

Equip: When your spells deal damage you have a chance to gain 11,761 critical strike for 20 sec.

I'll go over my testing of each trinket in different posts below and if everyone can chime in and let us know how you are getting on with them it would be great.

Also, if anyone notices anything out of place with the calculations, please just let me know. Don't be an ass about it, I'm researching as best I can and trying to provide accurate numbers but I'm pretty sure I'll be wrong on some points.

I've tested some of the trinkets a bit for fire, and as far as i can see going with the amplification and crit proc trinket seem to work out best for the opening burst at least. the stacking int one never seems to want to proc for my burst and as the 84% crit damage increase isn't snap shotted by combustion i think the crit proc works out better overall, as you want to use combust as early as possible once the amplification trinket procs. i haven't done a huge amount of testing yet so i could be wrong about this, the stacking int one may be better overall if you can get high stacks very quickly, im not really sure.

The trinket I've tested most is the Amplification one and I have to say, it blows anything I've used before out of the water. This trinket increases Combustions nearly five-fold over not having it which is very scary. It is incredibly OP when it lines up with everything else but it is so powerful, I've found even if it doesnt proc at the same time as the other Trinkets/Meta etc, it's better to wait for it as it trumps all other procs combined.

Lets say a Pyro Crits for 300k, it is now going to Crit for 426k (150k * 2.84)

84% increase to Mastery

Lets say we have 35% Mastery Raid buffed + we use Mage Armor for Combustions, this would have us at 12200 ((42.5% * 400) - 4800(Initial 12% rating given for ignite)) Mastery rating. With this buff, Mastery increases to 22448 (12200 * 1.84) or 68.12% (56.12% from rating + 12%)

84% increase to Haste

Lets assume we are at 5273 haste (25 ticks every AT combust with T14 2 set - AKA My Haste ￼), we will also most likely have 3750 up from the new 2set at this stage also so 9023. Amplified this increases to 16602.

As we can see, the Crit and Mastery buff are both combining to make huge Ignites while the haste is adding many extra ticks to Combustion.

Lets just use one Pyro as example (note the Pyro Crit number is arbitrary):

The above example is just of a single Pyroblast Crit and the Combustion damage almost triples, it more than triples if we factor in the tick crits that will happen while amplified is still up. Given we often stack 4-6 Pyroes for a Combustion, depending on what other haste procs are up, I have found my Combustions to be 4-5 times higher during amplified than without it. Self buffed with food, flask and hero on pull, I have had many attempts where I can burst at 1.2m - 1.5m DPS with upwards of an opening 20m Combust, while spreading onto other targets I have burst above 3.5m. With all procs and hero, I can get 66 ticks of Combustion on a single target, it is ticking more than 3 times per second which is insane.

To put this into context on what it will do to our overall damage, lets take a look at a fight situation:

Lets say we currently do 70m damage throughout a fight and Combustion makes up 13% of our damage. (These are just some estimates I've gotten from Heroic ToT encounters on WoL)

This means Combustion does about 9m of the 70m damage.

If this trinket increases Combustion damage by even 4 times what it is now, Combustion will do 36m.

Add this to the overall damage minus the original combustion damage and we get 61m (70-9) + 36m = 97m.

Combustion now does 37% (36m/97m) of our overall damage and increases our damage by 38.5% (97m/70m)

It really worries me that a single trinket can have such an impact on damage, especially for fire as it is unbelievably good for this spec. Also, I think in its current state, it is going to be BiS for every caster and healer meaning competition to get one will be insane.

I also understand the fire nerfs are incoming (they have to be, we are just insane on PTR) so this is all subject to change based on what happens there. All of the above also assumes the player is playing optimally and has decent RnG when the trinket procs etc.

Really excellent post, was a very good read and not a single part of it was wrong.

The problem with the trinket is that its actually just ok for some class's, the synergy that Fire has with combust on the opener is insane, i can see this trinket leading to combust getting a change where it copies 50% of the current ignite damage on the target.

Remember to the amp trinket is 105 second internal and the CD on glyphed combust is 90 seconds so you could get every combust empowered via the trinket.

Of course abraxis, as I already told you . The non heroic version of the crit trinket grants ~26% (20% * 1.3 = 26%). Right now we are nearly able to obtain 50% (BiS) passive crit which are ~61% with CM, (dynamic crit ratings excluded).

If the amplifier and crit trinket synergize as currently expected, we will have devastating combustion by sacrificing crit for mastery and extreme high crit ratings for combustion when we need it.

*Edit* The numbers in the OP are not correct as far as I know, because the amplifier increase ratings not %.

Of course abraxis, as I already told you . The non heroic version of the crit trinket grants ~26% (20% * 1.3 = 26%). Right now we are nearly able to obtain 50% (BiS) passive crit which are ~61% with CM, (dynamic crit ratings excluded).

If the amplifier and crit trinket synergize as currently expected, we will have devastating combustion by sacrificing crit for mastery and extreme high crit ratings for combustion when we need it.

*Edit* The numbers in the OP are not correct as far as I know, because the amplifier increase ratings not %.

Yeah, if this is the case then the mastery number will need to be re-adjusted but the haste one is based off rating. Mastery however has 12% (4800) added from the offset which doesnt actually exist in the rating. If it is the case, amplified mastery would fall to about 68% instead of 78% putting the amplified combustion 2.5x bigger than the non amplified one instead of 3x. I'll try to confirm this later on and update then.

I was pretty sure that the Amplification one was on an ICD with the Crit one but wasn't 100% sure so it's great to get confirmation of that.

I think you're right too AjayxD, I can see changes coming to Combustion pretty soon. I'm still not convinced they will go after CM given they reverted the last change they tried to make to it because of how fire performs with lower gear but the nerfs have to come somewhere I guess.

Lets assume we are at 5273 haste (25 ticks every AT combust with T14 2 set - AKA My Haste ), this increases to 7649 with raid haste leaving us at about 18%. With the amplified buff, haste increases to 14074 or 33.1% (7649 * 1.84)

The main problem you're running into is you're calculating Ignite wrong. Combustion is based off the Ignite tick not the Ignite Bank (the total value of the Ignite you're holding).
Considering Ignite ticks twice, the tick value is half of your numbers. I will continue to use Grondath's Armory values.

Combustion ticks for 61.73K with 30 total ticks, total Combustion damage of 1.851M

Now, this is not to prove that the Amp trinket isn't strong - of course it is, however do try and hold onto your panties, please. It's not nearly as strong as you're making it out. It's still worrying for Fire, however.

Thank you for the input and for pointing out areas I was off, much appreciated for looking at these in the future.

For Mastery, yeah, I wasn't 100% sure if it would take the initial 12% into account but after just testing on PTR, you are correct, it doesn't, I'll update my calculations on that above.

I wasn't able to test with a Haste buff but it does make sense if its based of rating that Haste will not be included however yeah, I did neglect the new 2 set for simplicity sake.

As for Ignite, that is a big miss on my part, but in principle doesn't negate the argument that with this trinket, our Combustion hits nearly 3 times harder which was the point I was trying to make really. I'm trying a few other bits out now and will update the OP also.

Crit trinket and the amplifier one both have 105s ICD which lines up nice for combustions.

Question is: is the crit procc needed?

I think it might be amazing for Combustion cycles. The proc is an additional 19% crit. On the pull getting the Wush v2.0 stacked high probably isn't going to happen. You'd need 10 spell casts. Normally I get ready for combustion with a pyro -> bomb -> IB -> FB and then start going nuts with pyros.

You'll basically be crit capped any time it's up (Or really damn close) So you can use PoM -> mage armor before any combustion and just go crazy with near-guaranteed strings of pyro! crits.

Outside of that, the new Wush might turn out to be better, depending on how haste and mastery interact next tier.

And right on que, Ajay comes with the crying of fire too OP. dude, seriously get over it some trinkets are going to work really well with some classes UVLS demo and now this trinket with fire. its not a big deal man just let it happen

@blugatti
Did you not get banned once before for doing nothing but trolling, this is a discussion about how the trinkets interact with the class, i feel i have something to add to the topic, you would be much better off ignoring my posts if they irritate you as you dont want to get banned again for hating.

And right on que, Ajay comes with the crying of fire too OP. dude, seriously get over it some trinkets are going to work really well with some classes UVLS demo and now this trinket with fire. its not a big deal man just let it happen

This is not a counter arguement to anything, i said that the trinket will probably cause combustion to get nerfed (which is extremely likely), its not a surprise to anyone that fire is going to get nerfed for 5.4, but as the number pass is not even close im pretty sure there arent that many people worried either.

Any player with the ability to use a calculator can see that this trinket causes issues with combust because the damage gain can theoretically be more than double (maybe 3 times) what any other class can pull and its all down to that one spell, this is a mechanical issue and not a number issue because of the way combustion works.